Courses

In
his 1916 poem “A Pact,” seminal modernist Ezra Pound stages a reconciliation
between himself and Walt Whitman, his so-called “pig-headed father” whom he has
“detested long enough”: Pound declares, “let there be commerce between us.”
This survey of American literature from 1865 to the present examines such
“commerce” between the modes of writing that have come to define the modern
American literary tradition. We will examine the ways Mark Twain and Henry
James expanded upon the literary realism defined during Victorianism and
American Romanticism, and how writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris,
Zitkala Sa, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman took those expansions further. We will
then turn our attention to the experiments of modernism and postmodernism,
considering how, for instance, Moore, Williams, Faulkner, Hurston, McKay,
Brooks, Hayden, Miller, Baraka, and Rich challenged our very understanding of
what we might call “American realities” while insisting on the plurality of
that phrase. Finally, we will read a selection of contemporary poems
(Harjo, Lee, Sharif) and short fiction (Lahiri, Díaz) to inquire into the ways
that writers today continue to make and re-make American literature.

20029

AML3273

Beat Lit & Mid-century Writers

World Wide Web (W)

Not Online

Mid-Century American society was prosperous for some but
also severely constrained by institutionalized racial segregation, McCarthyism
and the red scare, and rampant sexism and sexual repression. Young American writers
often positioned their work squarely against those restraints. What we now call
the Beat Generation in many ways epitomized such literary repudiation. This
course will examine the radical poetry and prose of seminal Beat writers such
as Burroughs, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Snyder as well as
lesser-known works by women beat writers (di Prima, Jones, Waldman). We will
also read key works of writers who inspired the Beats (Blake, Whitman, Williams,
Duncan, Rexroth) and follow lines to the contemporaneous literary endeavors of
confessionalism, Black Arts poetry, and the New York School. Throughout, we
will pay attention to the legacy of the Beats and their mid-century
contemporaries, locating influences in present-day culture.

Course Number

Course

Title

Mode

Date and Time

Syllabus

91259

AML3041

American Literature Ⅱ

Face to Face Instruction (P)

Tu,Th 04:30 PM - 05:45 PM

Not Online

In
his 1916 poem “A Pact,” seminal modernist Ezra Pound stages a reconciliation
between himself and Walt Whitman, his so-called “pig-headed father” whom he has
“detested long enough”: Pound declares, “let there be commerce between us.”
This survey of American literature from 1865 to the present examines such
“commerce” between the modes of writing that have come to define the modern
American literary tradition. We will examine the ways Mark Twain and Henry
James expanded upon the literary realism defined during Victorianism and
American Romanticism, and how writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris,
Zitkala Sa, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman took those expansions further. We will
then turn our attention to the experiments of modernism and postmodernism,
considering how, for instance, Moore, Williams, Faulkner, Hurston, McKay,
Brooks, Hayden, Miller, Baraka, and Rich challenged our very understanding of
what we might call “American realities” while insisting on the plurality of
that phrase. Finally, we will read a selection of contemporary poems
(Harjo, Lee, Sharif) and short fiction (Lahiri, Díaz) to inquire into the ways
that writers today continue to make and re-make American literature.

91260

AML3041

American Literature Ⅱ

Face to Face Instruction (P)

Tu,Th 12:00 PM - 01:15 PM

Not Online

In
his 1916 poem “A Pact,” seminal modernist Ezra Pound stages a reconciliation
between himself and Walt Whitman, his so-called “pig-headed father” whom he has
“detested long enough”: Pound declares, “let there be commerce between us.”
This survey of American literature from 1865 to the present examines such
“commerce” between the modes of writing that have come to define the modern
American literary tradition. We will examine the ways Mark Twain and Henry
James expanded upon the literary realism defined during Victorianism and
American Romanticism, and how writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris,
Zitkala Sa, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman took those expansions further. We will
then turn our attention to the experiments of modernism and postmodernism,
considering how, for instance, Moore, Williams, Faulkner, Hurston, McKay,
Brooks, Hayden, Miller, Baraka, and Rich challenged our very understanding of
what we might call “American realities” while insisting on the plurality of
that phrase. Finally, we will read a selection of contemporary poems
(Harjo, Lee, Sharif) and short fiction (Lahiri, Díaz) to inquire into the ways
that writers today continue to make and re-make American literature.